Preface and Acknowledgements Summary and Analysis

This memoir relates the experience of noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, who, after years of having a position of authority over his patients, experiences a severe injury and discovers what it feels like to become a patient himself. From this new perspective, he examines the healing process and comes to what he feels are some important conclusions about the nature of the physician/patient relationship in general, and of his own injury in particular.

In the preface, the author describes the initial incident, an injury while climbing a mountain in Norway, that led to his contemplation of his complicated relationship with pain and recovery. In turn, he writes, this contemplation led to deeper and more complex contemplations of psychological responses to physical injuries. In these later contemplations, he adds, he was supported by the friendship of...